Soldier Girls (7 page)

What Debbie really did was run the hot dog wagon. That's what everybody called the PX truck, out of which she sold pop, Gatorade, French fries, nachos, baked potatoes, and hot dogs every summer, during their two weeks of annual training. During the rest of the year, on drill weekends, she sold a more limited fare—pop, water, Gatorade, chips, candy bars. From the outside, the hot dog wagon looked just like any other army truck—camouflage paint job—but through big double doors at the back people could step inside and order food. Shelves lined the interior of the trailer, and on the counters stood Crock-Pots, a microwave, and a freezer. The hot dog wagon doubled as the place where the retention team met with every member of the unit on an annual basis, to discuss how to keep them in the military, but after retention expanded the offerings, it became a favored hangout, too. Debbie and her colleagues chatted with every single person who came by, turning the retention center into a hub of social activity. Soon the hot dog wagon actually started making money, to the consternation of the brass. Previously the retention center had always operated at a loss, and profits perplexed the company's leadership. Supervisors argued about whether to require the hot dog wagon to stop making money or whether to give the extra money back to the state of Indiana. Debbie solved the dilemma by starting a fund for members of their Guard unit: If somebody had trouble paying their bills, they got assistance, or if a family member died, the unit sent flowers. She made the math work so that the hot dog trailer neither made nor lost any money, which pleased her superiors.

After she worked there for a few years, Debbie earned a certain degree of fame, and whenever she walked into a veterans' organization, people who had once been or were still in the 113th Support Battalion would come up to her and say, Oh, it's the hot dog lady! But her bosses found the hot dog wagon unmanly and were slow to appreciate the way in which the food truck was boosting morale. Then one of the main skeptics, a man named Captain Hoskins, was promoted to company commander. After he observed firsthand the emotional lift that his soldiers received from chatting with Debbie, he became a convert.
In May 2000, when the 113th Support Battalion prepared to go to Louisiana for a joint readiness training exercise—a practice battle in which the soldiers mimicked the roles they would perform if they actually went to war—the commander of Bravo Company made sure the hot dog wagon went, too. Soldiers loaded all of the cooking equipment into the truck. But they could not put the potatoes on the truck without violating weight requirements. Hoskins did not want to try to pull off a field training exercise without Debbie's baked potatoes, but he couldn't exceed the weight restrictions, because the trucks were going to be loaded onto barges and floated down the Mississippi. Hoskins ordered every soldier in the company to put five pounds of potatoes into their rucksacks. That was when Debbie knew that she had become beloved.

Over the previous decade, Debbie had seen a steady influx of young women join the unit after the passage of the Montgomery GI Bill. The original GI Bill, of 1944, had provided a range of benefits, including college tuition, to soldiers who were returning home from World War II. By contrast, the Montgomery GI Bill offered tuition benefits as an inducement to enlist. Because the United States had moved to an all-volunteer force, the military was constantly looking for ways to entice young people to sign up, and tuition benefits were being used alongside cash bonuses. The ratio of men to women in the roughly one-hundred-person group that drilled in Bedford had shifted to about three to one, meaning there were now about twenty-five female soldiers. Debbie adopted them all. They turned to her for guidance in every arena—life, love, the military. And yet, running a hot dog wagon was not exactly what she had envisioned, years earlier, when she had signed up to join the National Guard. Where was the glory in making baked potatoes? Somehow her dreams had shrunk. She took fulfillment in her work, but she had envisioned more. She had thought she might stem a flood, secure power, go overseas. But the 113th Support Battalion had stopped sending mechanics to Germany, and during emergencies Debbie was not needed. On March 12, 1991, a freak storm sheathed vast swaths of northern Indiana in several inches of solid ice, and then sent high winds gusting through the frozen, glittering landscape. Tree branches that had started to leaf out cracked down across roads and power lines. Miles of
utility poles toppled over, and half a million people lost electrical power. National Guard soldiers rushed to get communities functioning—but only those soldiers who had experience with generators were needed. Other people from her unit received calls to assist in nearby towns that had been hit by tornadoes, but the twisters never touched down close to where Debbie lived. During the entirety of Debbie's service in the National Guard, the state of Indiana experienced no emergencies that called for expertise in fire control. More than sixty thousand members of the Army National Guard were sent overseas during Operation Desert Storm, but the United States had troops on the ground for only a short time, and the Guard soldiers primarily assisted with tasks such as laundry services and field sanitation. Once again, Debbie's skills were not required.

Debbie had not voted for George H. W. Bush—and she would not vote for his son, either—but that was just because Debbie did not vote. It was a secret, and one of which she felt ashamed, but she had never voted in an election in her entire life. Wasn't even registered. The problem was she never felt certain that she knew enough to make a solid choice. There was just one man in public life Debbie could imagine taking the trouble to cast a vote for, should he ever run, and that was Colin Powell. During the Persian Gulf War, Colin Powell won Debbie over with his cool unflappability and his direct manner. He was a military man, a straight shooter, she decided. Debbie had absolute faith in Powell. Otherwise she remained entirely skeptical of politics.

By this point she had grown skeptical of romance as well. One night at Shorty's, Debbie met an auto mechanic named Bill, and they dated for a few years. At one point Bill suggested that they marry, but Debbie said, “Bill, it's not going to happen. I enjoy your company, I like being with you, but as far as getting married again, that just isn't in the books for me.” Instead, they fell into a regular arrangement, where they saw each other most Saturday nights. Usually Bill would drive up to Bloomington and spend the night with Debbie. Or if it was a drill weekend, she might spend the night with him in Bedford. Bill was comforting but not central. It was the crowd at Shorty's that filled her life. The crowd at Shorty's, and her beloved dog Maxx. That's all she needed; no more husbands.

In Bloomington, Debbie often went to the local Moose Lodge on Friday nights. Both of her parents had belonged to the organization, and Debbie herself was a member of Women of the Moose. She and T.J. got in the habit of dropping by on Friday nights, when their friend Diane worked as a waitress. In 1997, Debbie attended a Moose convention, along with T.J. and Diane. Diane's husband, Jerry, who managed the maintenance shop at E-Z-GO, a company that serviced electronic golf carts, brought his coworker, Jeff Deckard. T.J. and Debbie were out on the dance floor, acting silly.

Jeff said, “Who are those two girls?”

Jerry explained, “Oh, they're friends of ours from the Moose.”

“You need to ask T.J. out,” Diane told Jeff. “She's single.”

“What about that other girl?” Jeff asked.

“Oh, you don't want to go out with her,” Diane said. “She's dating somebody.”

Jeff was a road mechanic with E-Z-GO. He drove all over Indiana, working on golf carts. He was forty years old, and had been divorced for about five years. A steady, old-fashioned man, he had been raised by a Pentecostal woman, and he would never approach another man's girlfriend. One evening at the Moose Lodge, Diane came over with some drinks and told Debbie and T.J., “These are from Jeff.”

She added, “T.J., he said to tell you hi and that he hoped you were doing okay.”

“Well, what's he saying hi for?” grumbled T.J. She liked men who looked like Mr. America, and objected that Jeff's hair was thinning.

“He's a really nice guy,” counseled Diane. “You'd like him once you talked to him.”

“Diane, I'm not interested,” said T.J.

One night, Debbie showed up at the Moose alone and saw Jeff drinking at the bar.

“You care if I sit next to you?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” said Jeff. “Go right ahead.”

They talked for two hours, and learned that they both liked guns. Jeff mentioned that he had served in the navy.

“Well, can I ask you a question?” Jeff said.

“Of course,” Debbie said, figuring he wanted tips on how to approach T.J.

“I understand that you're dating somebody,” Jeff said.

“What? No. Have you ever seen me in here with somebody?”

“Well, no, but Diane says that you have a boyfriend.”

“Really,” said Debbie. “I don't have a boyfriend—I have an acquaintance. If you say boyfriend, that means commitment. And I don't have commitments.”

Jeff looked quizzical.

“Why are you asking anyway?” Debbie wanted to know.

“Well,” said Jeff, “I've wanted to ask you out for a really long time. I kept trying to tell Diane, I want to meet the other girl. But I really don't want to ask somebody out that's already in a situation—I don't believe in that.”

“Well, let me tell you,” said Debbie. “First, I don't have a serious boyfriend. Second, I don't want a serious boyfriend. And third, T.J.'s not interested in you. You don't have enough hair for her. I'm sorry to say that, but you just don't.”

“Yeah, I already figured that out,” said Jeff. “I'm not interested in her. I never have been. But if I like somebody, I only like to see them one-on-one. I don't like to see multiple people at the same time.”

“Well, suit yourself,” said Debbie.

They chatted a little longer and then decided to leave. Right before they departed, however, Jeff had a change of heart. “You know what?” he said. “I think I am going to ask you out. Would you be willing to go?”

“Yeah,” said Debbie. “I'm not making you no promises, but I'll go with you.”

Debbie never dated another man again. Jeff kept his home spotless. He washed the dishes, made the bed, and scrubbed the shower stall before he left for work. Mr. Clean, she called him. Debbie worried that Jeff would reject her as soon as he saw that she was a bad housekeeper. After her refrigerator had broken, Debbie had taken to living out of a cooler, which she kept full of beer and ice; she had stopped buying food, and just picked up meals when she was out. Jeff asked if she was ever going to invite him over, and she said no, because she was not a
Suzy Homemaker. Then Jeff's landlord sold the home that he had been renting, and Jeff moved in with his mother. One night Debbie and Jeff had sex in the basement with the heating vents wide open. Jeff's mother announced that Debbie was no longer welcome to spend the night.

“My God, I'm forty years old,” said Jeff. “And my mother's not letting me have a sleepover!”

“Honey, she's Pentecostal,” said Debbie.

Jeff spent the following night at Debbie's house. The next morning, he gave her one of his looks.

“You have no food in the fridge,” he observed.

“Why would I have food in the fridge?” Debbie asked. “It's just me.”

“I guess you don't have to have food,” said Jeff.

He moved in that year. He offered to help pay the bills, but Debbie declined, saying she would feel obligated. Debbie remained entirely faithful to Jeff, but she still logged many hours at Shorty's. Debbie rarely acted drunk, but in the diary that she kept on an intermittent basis, she carefully noted what sort of alcohol she consumed and what effect it had upon her. When Debbie and Jeff took a trip to Belize, after Debbie was named “manager of the year” by the company that ran her salon, Debbie wrote in her diary that they ordered shots of Baileys with their coffee at breakfast. Debbie explained to the waitress that this was their “get up and go” drink. In the afternoon, they drank multiple piña coladas, and afterward, Debbie noted, with obvious regret, “Can't get a buzz.” There was nothing unusual about her behavior, Debbie felt—everybody she hung around with in the Guard consumed large amounts of alcohol. And she was never late for drill. Debbie was proud of her ability to put away a lot of liquor and still make it to wherever she needed to be. She jokingly called herself a lush, but what she meant by that term was that while she depended on alcohol, she could still function.

By the time she reported to the armory in Bedford, four days after the two hijacked airplanes hit the Twin Towers, Debbie had clocked fourteen years with the National Guard—fourteen years of drill, fourteen years of being overlooked, fourteen years of drinking. When Bravo Company divided in response to the tremendous uncertainty around what the future might hold, her greatest concern was not if they would go to war, but whether she would be included. Maybe she would finally
get to participate in a meaningful cause, maybe her life's path would head in a more fulfilling direction. Debbie hungered to join with a purpose larger than herself. She wanted to see the rest of the world—what lay beyond the blinking fireflies and plentiful cornfields of Indiana.

At drill, Bravo Company's first sergeant called the clamorous group to order. Chattering ceased and the part-time soldiers gathered into formation, lining up in rows in the battle dress uniforms they put on once a month. The first sergeant kept his remarks short. “We don't know anything,” he said. “Expect changes in your training in the future.”

A
T ABERDEEN PROVING
Ground, jittery soldiers on high alert reported a rash of false alarms. There was a van on the post. Two strangers were spotted lurking behind a building. As ordered, Michelle Fischer rolled underneath military vehicles to look for anything suspicious. She had no idea what to deem suspicious, though—everything down there looked pretty strange. For weeks she had been looking forward to changing back into her Roxy hoodie and her Paris Blues jeans, which she was supposed to be able to do during her fifth week of training, but such privileges were abruptly rescinded—it was easier to spot an intruder if everybody else wore a uniform—and that was when Michelle began to apprehend that she might not get her civilian identity back again. How had she misplaced something so vital? The soldiers in training assumed they might be sent somewhere soon, but they could get no hard information. In this fashion, Michelle came to appreciate the enormousness of the commitment she had made to the military.